Rockford-area counselors make final push for health insurance sign-up

ROCKFORD — Leigh Kuyper’s meeting to sign up for health insurance on Wednesday was pretty quick and painless.

The 39-year-old Rockford resident had started the sign-up process previously but she didn’t have all the necessary paperwork with her to finish the application.

She visited Unitarian Universalist Church, 4848 Turner St., assuming she’d qualify for Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for low-income residents. Charlie Worboys, a health insurance counselor with the city of Rockford, helped her enter her information into an iPad, which told her she did in fact qualify for Medicaid.

“I haven’t had insurance in years,” Kuyper said. “I’ve worked a number of jobs that didn’t offer it. I’d been applying for Medicaid since I moved back to Illinois in 2005 and been consistently denied.”

Counselors were busy Wednesday at the church with walk-in appointments as part of a final push to enroll people in health insurance before the March 31 deadline imposed by the Affordable Care Act. Most Americans must sign up for coverage by that date to avoid a penalty when they file their taxes next year.

A daylong enrollment event takes place Tuesday at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. People who don’t have insurance through their employers or programs such as Medicare need to sign up for insurance — either the expanded Medicaid program or plans through the Illinois Health Insurance Marketplace — by March 15 if they want coverage to start April 1.

If people sign up March 16 through March 31, their coverage will start May 1. If they miss the March 31 deadline, open enrollment through the state marketplaces closes until November. Medicaid enrollment will stay open throughout the year.

“We’re really trying hard to let them know it’s just crucial in a city like Rockford that we get people signed up,” Worboys said. “Getting the word out is difficult.”

The Winnebago County Health Department is administering a grant for nonprofits and governments that pays counselors to help people enroll in health insurance. Those groups have helped about 2,500 households in Winnebago County enroll, said Juliana Barker, coordinator for the in-person grant counselor program.

Local officials estimate that about 40,000 people in the county are uninsured and would qualify for either Medicaid or the state health plans. So many people haven’t enrolled and remain uninsured, although the 2,500 households number doesn’t reflect the number of people who may have sought enrollment help and then finished applications on their own time.

Vicki and Jim Crone of Rockford visited the church Wednesday to research information about health plans for their two adult children, ages 27 and 29, who live out of state.

“We found better plan info for our son for sure,” Vicki said. “We’re so happy about that, and it was definitely worth it to come in for the help.”

Vicki said she wants to support the premise of the Affordable Care Act and “doesn’t want to see it fail.”

“Some people refuse to even look at (the plans), but if they would look, they would see that there are beneficial plans to have,” she said. “I think it’s very worthwhile.”

Crucial to making the health reform law successful is getting a balance of people — young and old, healthy and sick — to sign up for health plans. Reaching younger people has been especially challenging, which is why state officials are ramping up their outreach efforts by partnering with online publications such as The Onion and Buzzfeed.

Officials expected March to be a busy month for last-minute enrollments, especially because of technology glitches at the federal level that delayed enrollments last fall.

“We’ve always been building toward this particular month,” said Brian Gorman, director of outreach for Get Covered Illinois. “Without the good work of our navigators on the ground, all of this wouldn’t be possible ... They’ve invested a lot of time and energy, and we think we’ll see that investment pay off in the form of enrollments.”

Gorman said outreach efforts are trying to steer people away from thinking about the penalties they’ll have to pay if they don’t sign up for insurance to focus more on the risks they’re taking by not having health insurance.

“The exposure to not having health coverage and the potential liability consumers face is great,” Gorman said. “If you get injured, that’s the risk. It’s the cost of a broken arm, an ER visit. That’s real to young people.”

Gorman said about 75 percent of people in Illinois have qualified for help paying for their monthly insurance costs in the form of tax credits or cost-sharing reductions. Those calculations are based on income.